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  <div class="section" id="the-open-data-protocol-odata">
<h1>2.1. The Open Data Protocol (OData)<a class="headerlink" href="#the-open-data-protocol-odata" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>This sub-package defines functions and classes for working with OData, a
data access protocol based on Atom and Atom Pub: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.odata.org/">http://www.odata.org/</a></p>
<p>This sub-package only deals with version 2 of the protocol <em>at the moment</em>.</p>
<p>OData is not an essential part of supporting the Standards for Learning,
Education and Training (SLET) that gives pyslet its name, though I have
actively promoted its use in these communities.  As technical standards
move towards using REST-ful web services it makes sense to converge
around some common patterns for common use cases.  Many of the protocols
now being worked on are much more like basic data-access layers spread
over the web between two co-operating systems.  HTTP on its own is often
good enough for these applications but when the data lends itself to
tabular representations I think the OData standard is the best protocol
available.</p>
<p>The purpose of this group of modules is to make is easy to use the
conventions of the OData protocol as a general purpose data-access layer
(DAL) for Python applications.  To get started, look at the
<a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_consumer.html"><em>Data Consumers</em></a> section which gives a high-level overview of the
API with examples that use Microsoft&#8217;s Northwind data-service.</p>
<p>If you are interested in writing an OData provider, or you simply want
to use these classes to implement a data access layer for your own
application then look in <a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_provider.html"><em>OData Providers</em></a>.</p>
<div class="toctree-wrapper compound">
<ul>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_consumer.html">2.1.1. Data Consumers</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_consumer.html#introduction">2.1.1.1. Introduction</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_consumer.html#the-data-access-layer-in-depth">2.1.1.2. The Data Access Layer in Depth</a></li>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_provider.html">2.1.2. OData Providers</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_memexample.html">2.1.2.1. Sample Project: InMemory Data Service</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_sqlexample.html">2.1.2.2. A SQL-Backed Data Service</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_customexample.html">2.1.2.3. Sample Project: Custom Data Service</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_provider.html#which-dal-implementation">2.1.2.4. Which DAL Implementation?</a></li>
</ul>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_reference.html">2.1.3. OData Reference</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_csdl.html">2.1.3.1. Entity Data Model (EDM)</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_core.html">2.1.3.2. OData Core Classes</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_metadata.html">2.1.3.3. OData Metadata Classes</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_client.html">2.1.3.4. OData Client</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_memds.html">2.1.3.5. An In-Memory Data Service</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_sqlds.html">2.1.3.6. SQL Database-based Data Services</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="odatav2_server.html">2.1.3.7. OData Server Reference</a></li>
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